Loving Your Neighbor as a Republican
“And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Matthew 22:39
This amazing commandment appears multiple times in the Bible, and it is one of the most powerful and life-centering sentences ever composed. Recently a dear friend of mine, Former Lt Gov. Geoff Duncan, penned a column in the AJC saying becoming a Democrat is the better way to follow that commandment. I respectfully but strongly disagree.
“Love your neighbor” has become even more relevant recently because of hate coming out of the extreme sides of both parties. As a man of faith, I often hear both “how can one be a Christian and Republican / Democrat” because of X. People shake their heads at rhetoric from some of their party leaders. We have generationally high levels of uncivil discourse, political violence, and social media fed insanity. Many Democrats are frustrated with the overly woke “everyone is racist and there is no such thing as biological sex and let’s be socialists” extreme, while many Republicans can’t abide the toxic meanness, massive deficits, and abandonment of many other traditional GOP causes.
Regardless, political parties are still fundamentally about policy choices that have massive implications to the American experiment. The Democrat worldview is that the government usually is the best way to love your neighbor, one I believe is mistaken.
The Welfare State or Great Society is the marquee headliner for government programs. From an “intention” point of view, it fits “loving your neighbor.” But impersonal Great Society checks and debit cards have unfortunately bred a culture of dependence and have been a big factor in the rise of the disintegration of the nuclear family and single parent households. The government’s safety net is filled with cliffs that trap people in lower wage jobs, unable to advance toward self-sufficiency for fear of losing critical food, child-care, and healthcare. We have lost the personal touch and inspiration, the connection that charity delivered by real people who care, churches, and fellow community members bring. Some very basic safety net is necessary, but are “you” the one really loving your neighbor if some tax deduction of yours indirectly ends up in a transfer payment that you have nothing to do with?
That transitions us to health care, the other elephant in the “love your neighbor” room. Geoff now supports Medicaid expansion. This again sounds great on its surface. The problems with Medicaid expansion are inefficiency, significant fraud, and stepping further down the road to single payer government medicine, which despite sounding good basically just devolves into rationing and long waits and adding to the national debt. The talking point that the “Big Beautiful Bill cuts $911 billion over 10 years from Medicaid” is not a cut – it is actually a relatively small reduction in projected large increases in spending from $650B per year now and will still be ~$850B in 2034. By that “cut” logic, if I give you a 4% raise instead of a 5% raise I have cut your salary 1%.
Lt Gov. Duncan chaired, and I helped coordinate, an outstanding task force on Health Care Reform. We discussed ideas to expand coverage to more people at lower cost. Those included reducing drug middlemen, more direct primary care, telemedicine, malpractice reform, reducing government mandates and controls on private insurance, repealing Certificate of Need, licensing reform, etc. These will lower the costs and expand coverage, without the continual slide into the single payer abyss that doubling down on Medicaid and other federal programs will do. I know this is trite but it is true. If you want to see the future of US government health care go to the VA or a Post Office. It is not loving your neighbor to promote policy that leads to a long term bad outcome.
Immigration is another area where you hear that it is “loving your neighbor” to “admit more or less everyone who wants to come into the US.” That may be somewhat nice to the person who came in, but how about the neighbor who loses their job to a lower paid illegal immigrant? Or the neighbors who have massive tax burdens or overcrowded schools in border towns? NYC is putting some immigrants in hotels with walking around money. Meanwhile their neighbors who are legally here are busting their butts. At some point if too many immigrants come in, the culture or finances collapse – see Europe for early hints of that. Then you have killed the golden goose. I am all for a better legal system with guest workers, etc, but it is not “love” to just open the borders in my opinion.
Let me state unequivocally that the United “Golden Goose” States of America has been the greatest instrument of reducing poverty and “loving your neighbor” in the history of the world. The reasons – free markets, liberty, and a strong culture of “can do” and “hard work” developed massive prosperity. Our system and the prosperity it generated helped drive medical, industrial, technical, energy, human rights, and agricultural revolutions which have helped give billions on the planet more food, massive increases in life span, better health, post WWII peace, and more personal freedoms. This came largely independent of foreign aid checks. Of course, other nations were part of this revolution too, but the US is at the top of the list. Government largesse was not the reason for our prosperity. And now unsustainable debt threatens that prosperity. The GOP is only marginally better in this area, but is it “loving your neighbor” to pile on federal spending at a rate that causes a collapse of our currency or catastrophic inflation? Or to pile on regulation after regulation that throttles back that engine? If we kill or strangle the golden goose there will be no eggs for the poor or anyone.
Here is what I believe it boils down to. Most Democratic policies sound kind and their intentions are usually good. However, when you dig down, their actual results are usually worse in the long run. We saw a clear example of this with the COVID massive trillion dollar “relief funds”. Democrats said if you didn’t support huge amounts you were not loving that neighbor. But that massive infusion of dollars caused predictable massive inflation. That inflation has been brutal to the struggling class of workers and poor in this country. It wasn’t worth it. Good intentions aren’t enough.
Before I wind up – Geoff is an actual neighbor and good friend. We served together in the Georgia House, where we were unofficial members of the “strong conservative” caucus. I worked for him as Policy Director for 2+ years when he was LG. He is a tremendous father, husband, and a man of great faith. I mean nothing personal with this column. I hope we live in a world where it is OK to disagree and still maintain connection.
I personally believe to love your neighbor means that I, and my family, my church, and local community need to do the bulk of the work. My wife and I are foster parents, and I have spent tons of my time in various volunteer efforts at church and the community. I sacrificed significantly by spending six years in the legislature and over two as a state employee. However as Paul said – I am not here to boast – I am indeed a very imperfect Christian. Only Jesus lived up to the standard, as we all fall short. But I want to, and try hard to, love my neighbor.
I am a Republican because I think that is the better approach to that mission. Outsourcing love to an inefficient and impersonal government is not the answer.
